Mike,

I think you would have to be a supervisor for the Army Corps of Engineers to explain that one. It really defies explanation. All of the islands created by dredging have made perfect breeding habitat for terns and also for cormorants, which eat way more fish, by being much larger birds. Because there are few other places for these birds to breed, due as you say to habitat loss, the only answer our wonderful govern"mental" employees can come up with is to make this habitat disappear too. Or to at least try to make it as unpalatable as possible. Anyone who has been paying attention in the past few months has seen many articles come out on this, this isn't new information. One recent article told of how a raptor (I believe it was a Golden Eagle - sorry, but I misremember) swooped down and grabbed a tern. Did this scare the other terns away? No, they merely watched their buddy get chomped and went on with their own lives, so bringing in predators doesn't help. Trying to lure the !
birds
away hasn't helped much. Getting rid of the dams is a no-win situation, because the people that use the river's water for irrigation refuse to let it be done (my older brother's way of putting it, "When salmon start growing vegetables, I'll start caring about salmon". Apparently he got the bad genes in the family, LOL). So, as far as the government is concerned, the only thing left to do is get rid of the habitat that was created by man, which effectively replaced all of the prior habitat destroyed by man. It's a sad, sad situation, and I hope someone can come up with a better, workable solution. Sorry if my earlier posting seemed odd, I was just being sarcastic about this idiotic situation.

Brett A. Wolfe
Seattle, WA (in San Joaquin Valley for summer 2005)
m_lincolnii at yahoo.com


Mike Patterson <celata at pacifier.com> wrote:
Maybe I'm just naive, but explain how habitat loss, the man-caused
problem that's led to salmon depletion and terns concentrating on the
lower Columbia, gets solved by taking out more habitat?


> Man created the problem, and man will now destroy the problem.
>
> Brett Wolfe
> Seattle, WA
>
> "Guttman, Burt" wrote:
> This was posted on Birdchat. It's a terrible situation. Major conservation
> groups, such as Audubon, have been trying to stop this. Does anyone know more
> about whether there's any hope of further legal action?


--
Mike Patterson
Astoria, OR
celata at pacifier.com

A rose by any other name (a rant on taxonomy)
http://www.surfbirds.com/blogs/mbalame/archives/002662.html
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